Coffee Break

I got me a new coffee mug - but it’s not just any ol’ coffee mug this time. It’s a bona fide I Love ezinearticles coffee mug and it showed up in my front hallway this morning - a complete surprise!

If you do any Google searches at all, chances are good that you’ve run into ezinearticles.com in the results. They’re one of the oldest - and definitely the best known - article directories on the web. Thousands of writers have been posting their expert articles on EzineArticles.com for years. They practically developed the ‘free articles for promotion” model for article directories.

The idea is that you write articles about your area of expertise, and post them on Ezine Articles along with an author’s Resource Box that includes your name and a link to your web site. The articles have to conform to fairly strict guidelines for quality writing in order to be approved, but once they’re approved, they are made available on the Ezine Articles web site along with permission to reprint the article in full as long as the Resource Box and any links contained in the article and resources are kept intact.

I wrote a handful of articles at Ezine Articles back in 2006 as samples to bring business in for a freelance writing network of which I was part - and then more or less forgot them until recently when another of my customers asked me to write several articles a month at Ezine Articles with links back to his site. Since it’s a cause that is near and dear to my heart - environmental and technology related - I agreed happily, and posted another five articles over a couple of months.

That brought my total articles on Ezine Articles to 10, which triggers a review of your account for upgrading from basic author status to basic plus author status - that allows you to post another 25 articles on the site. That’s how it usually goes - but if the editors really like your work and all of your articles have been approved with no problems, they sometimes skip you right past Basic Plus to Platinum membership - which allows you to post as many articles as you want, and shortens the length of time you wait for article approval.

To my surprise, I was one of the writers that got skipped past Basic Plus directly to Platinum membership, making me a very happy camper. But that was nothing to how delighted I was when my son stepped out in the hallway to take out the trash and returned with a package from EzineArticles in hand - it apparently was delivered yesterday and overlooked. Inside was an EzineArticles mug - and a packet of totally nummy Lighthouse Blend Coffee from Door County Coffee - which I am thoroughly enjoying right now, and may just order for myself so I can enjoy it even more.

So - thanks, EzineArticles! Love the mug, adore the coffee, LOVE EzineArticles.com!

Every once in a while, I do a post about the searches that bring people to my coffee blog. This morning, I got to wondering something a little different. What pages do people visit when they get here to Coffee Break?  Easy enough to figure out - I just hit the stats pages to check out where people land when they come by here. Here’s what interests people the most here at Coffee Break blog.

The big surprise - one of my most searched phrases is “is coffee good for your skin?” but my two coffee blog posts about coffee soaps aren’t on the list of top 10 coffee blog posts. Not so big surprise - posts about brand name coffees are high up on the list. Marley Coffee, Eight O’Clock Coffee, Starbucks coffee and Port City Coffee are all up there on the list. So is Dunkin Donuts - but it’s hiding. Can you tell which blog post is about Dunkin Donuts coffee?

I’ve got a new poll up - finally! But before I go into that, let me give you the results of the Coffee and Romance poll… it’s been up so long that you might not remember it at all. That’s because it took so long for people to respond to it - but FINALLY I think there’s enough responses there to report the results on “What’s the most romantic coffee moment? “

It’s pretty clear that the biggest response is watching the sunrise from the patio together over a cup of coffee. Morning, sunrise, patio, coffee, true love - what could be more romantic? According to you guys - nothing else even comes close. But I noticed something even more interesting - with one exception, all of the romantic coffee moments that y’all chose happen AT HOME. Out of 11 responses, only <b>1</b> of them was for something that happens outside your home - meeting someone for the first time over coffee.

The rest of the answers are all for moments in the home - romantic coffee at sunrise, second cup of coffee in bed and reading the paper together over coffee on Sunday morning. How cool is that? Coffee makes your special moments more romantic, see?

Our new poll in the sidebar is “Where did you get your favorite travel coffee mug?” I’ve gotta tell you that with very few exceptions, my favorite travel coffee mugs have all come from Dunkin Donuts. I have a whole collection of DD travel mugs, including the iced coffee travel mug that I’m drinking out of right now. DD tends to put out fun, stylish coffee travel mugs that have all the features I want - tight-fitting cover that keeps spills to a minimum without making it impossible to get a sip, a good grip and a good size. They’re also funky and fun - my summer iced coffee travel mug is bright orange with a surfboard graphic on it in pink, turquoise and bright yellow. It’s an eye-poppingly bright wake-me-up right mug.

How about you? Take the poll and tell me where your favorite coffee mug came from - and if it’s not on the list (convenience store, for instance?) write it in and leave me a comment!

I love love love it when new folks find my coffee blog. I wouldn’t be blogging about coffee if I didn’t love coffee and love sharing info about it. So it’s a given that I’m always happy when a new reader leaves me a comment here. This morning, I got not one, but two comments from Tara of Port City Coffee Roasters - and I’m extra-specially happy to have HER as a new reader because… she works for a cool coffee roaster and cafe that I had never heard of before.

Even better… she works at a cool coffee house and coffee roaster that is within driving distance of my house! Port City Coffee Roasters is up on the eastern seacoast in Portsmouth, NH, just a few miles from home. That means that a) I have another nearby place to order my coffee and b) it’s a nice Sunday drive away to go visit, have a coffee and then tell you what a cool place it is.

How do I know that it’s a cool place? How about fresh bagels from East End bagels and 45 different blends of coffee that you can try - and buy by the pound to bring home with you? Or that they’re cool enough to have some awesome coffee recipes up on their web site (Note to self: must try Irish Coffee pudding and Louisiana coffee)? Or the fact that they employ Tara, who is cool enough to like my coffee blog?

Anywho - if anyone is within driving distance of Port City Coffee Roasters and just happens to drop in there, drop me a line and tell me if they really are as cool as they seem. Meanwhile, I’m looking over their coffee offerings and deciding which of their coffees to try first!

This morning, I spent a bit of time wandering around to see who’s talking about coffee and what they have to say… here’s a roundup of the coffee news, the coffee blogs and what the caffeinistas are saying about coffee this morning.

My fave MSNBC news host, Carlos Watson runs The Stimulist blog, a great mashup of pop culture, news and neat stuff. Yesterday, The Stimulist posted about coffee curing Alzheimers - or at least reducing memory loss due to Alzheimers.

Glamour Magazine’s Vitamin G’s exposing a story about Viagra in coffee confiscated in Malaysia.  The coffee was apparently being marketed as “good for men”. Now I’m humming Viagra in the Water - and because I’m evil that way…

 Now it can be stuck in your head, too!

Don’t want to compost your coffee grounds or use them as natural pesticide? How about wearing them? Okay, it’s not a DIY project - yet. But Greenlaunches.com blog reports that a Taiwanese textile company, Singletex, has created a new fabric woven from - coffee grounds .  It’s environmentally friendly, offers UV protection and… has odor control properties. How cool is that?

Over at the Well-heeled blog, a twenty-something with pretensions of VioletteB’s shoe collection muses about all the money she spent at Starbucks and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf over the course of studying for her degree. Obviously, she hasn’t been reading my coffee blog, or she’d have been roasting and making her own coffee at home.

And check out Donald Clark’s Plan B blog for a much more thorough look at the new results out of Florida about coffee reversing the effects of Alzheimer’s . Clark takes a pretty in-depth look at how coffee and learning are linked - both chemically and socially.

Of course, don’t forget to drop by my regular coffee haunts - Daily Shot of Coffee and CoffeeNate.

8 O’Clock Coffee Mug is Gr8!

Y’all might remember that a few weeks back I ordered up a coffee mug from Eight O’Clock Coffee ’s Accumul8 Rewards program. It just arrived and the first thing I did was have the girl-child snap a picture of it with her phone (my camera grew legs and walked away a couple of months ago) so y’all could see it.

I will tell you that the photo does not do it justice. It’s a lovely 12 ounce mug - heavy enough to knock someone out with. The walls are thick - perfect for keeping coffee hot - and the handle is big enough to hold comfortable. And it’s black, a totally favorite color of mine. The only way it could have been better was if it was red.

Included in the package is a coupon for a free 11.5-12 ounce bag of any kind of Eight O’Clock coffee (up to $6.99) and - an unexpected bonus - a delightful white ceramic stirring spoon that slips through holes in the handle for easy serving. It’s adorable!

What did it cost me? The five minutes it took me to access the Accumul8 Rewards web site, fill in a few details, and enter the product code numbers on the two 3 lb bags of Eight O’Clock coffee I bought two months ago. No shipping fee, no nothing - just a few minutes of my time. AND - I’ve got two more bags sitting here, and will be buying another two when I do next month’s shopping in a couple of days. At this rate, I figure it will take me a few months to collect a full set - and just to tell you how much I love this mug… I’m ordering 3 more Eight O’Clock coffee collectible mugs instead of a $25 Visa gift card (2500 points).

credit: just4you@stock.xchang

Free Coffee in the Office - 13 Reasons to Give Your Boss

Do you drink coffee at work? When I was working at the homeless shelter, one of the nicest perks I had was access to unlimited, high quality free coffee - because my boss was a true coffee lover and one of our micro-businesses was a coffee roasting business. If you’d like to get free coffee at work, here’s a list of reasons you can use to help convince your boss that it’s in the company’s best interest to offer an office coffee service for employees.

1. Coffee increases productivity among workers.
2. Coffee gets you through the afternoon slump.
3. Coffee gets your workers started earlier in the morning.
4. If you have free coffee in the office, no one is wasting time doing a Dunkin run or heading out to Starbucks.
5. Free coffee is one of the top-requested perks in surveys of office workers.
6. Providing free coffee for your staff makes them feel like you care about them and their needs. It’s a little luxury that’s really appreciated.
7.  A Bnet article on business in down times suggested that quality office coffee is sacrosanct, even when you’re slashing budgets. If you cut out the coffee, the article suggests, you’re messing with a beloved perk and ritual, and leaving your employees thinking things are worse than they are.
8. Free coffee is a very cheap way of boosting company loyalty.
9. Coffee increases alertness, especially in employees doing detail-oriented work. In one study, employees doing data entry work made far fewer mistakes if they’d recently had a cup of coffee. One cup of coffee could save your business millions if it prevents a big mistake in accounting.
10. If it’s good enough for Microsoft, it should be good enough for our employees! (Yes, Microsoft serves free Starbucks to its employees. Not my favorite, but better than the usual office coffee)
11. The owner of a plumbing company in Framingham, MA says that when he switched and started offering free Green Mountain Coffee from a Keurig in the break room, his employees were around more often - instead of running down the street to grab a coffee.
12. You’ve always got good coffee on hand to offer to clients and customers.
13. If you’re nice to your secretary, she may even bring you a cup of coffee from the break room.

Fathers Day is just around the corner - which means that you have to come up with a neat gift for dad, one he won’t just shove up on a back shelf, one he’ll really, you know, USE. And ENJOY. If your dad is a coffee lover, you’ve got it easy. Here’s 13 great picks for a coffee loving dad to enjoy on Fathers Day.

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